Clockwork Hearts
by TheLastStroke
Summary: The after effects of Voldemort's destruction are revealed when six unlikely characters are trapped in an elevator together.
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: I know you guys aren't even reading this, but for those who are, I don't own any Harry Potter stuffs… as you should know by now.

Chapter 1: Prologue

On the coldest days of the year, the days when the snow consumes the fields rather than blanketing them, and no early buds can be found, passersby notice them. They are shocked to see such a contradiction; a mournful scene behind a fairytale one. Behind the majestic castle, its all white save for the trees in the forgotten graveyard. On other days, when the summer sun cooks the castle, or the spring rains wash it, or as the fall leaves frame it, the graves are unnoticed. Only when it is pure and clean, drenched in snow and unoccupied, are the graves remembered.

The black tombstones were the graves of deatheaters, who, no matter how evil, had been given proper burials. It was one of Dumbledore's curious whims to give _all_ who died in the war the right to leave their bodies at rest. The white stones were for heroes, who would forever be remembered. The tales of how they had spied for Dumbledore, or fought evil to the death had been exaggerated and rewritten, and would continue so for generations. But behind all of those, a tombstone cut of the original gray stands alone. The victim had been another casualty, a number, a statistic. He was neither villain nor hero, good or evil. He was not terribly despised or unfailingly loved.What he was, and who he might have become, were now buried beneath the snow and dirt, lost and forgotten.

For now that The Boy Who Lived had defeated He Who Could _Now_ Be Named, what did the few deaths in between matter? Compared to Voldemort's first massacre all those years ago, this war had been relatively bloodless. A few deaths here, some tortured minds there, it was all considered a small price for goodness to pay to overthrow evil. Most who were lost had deserved death or died bravely and heroically.

Most, but not all.

_He_ was merely a bystander in the war of light and dark, and his name was as faded in their minds as it was on the tombstone. No one still prayed for him every night and day, as his family was dead, and the Hogwarts students had forgotten.

But there were those who cared. Whether they knew it or not, they were affected…


	2. Strangers

Strangers.

It didn't matter that they had spent a large amount of their school careers knowing each other, or that some had even once been friends. It was unimportant now. Now, they were strangers.

The five of them sat in a circle, leaning against the smooth mahogany walls of one of the Ministry of Magic's elevators. They sat leaning against the walls, checking their watches, muttering under their breaths, counting the ceiling tiles, anything to pass the time. The elevator had stopped suddenly hours earlier, and was in no hurry to move any time soon. They could have passed the time by talking, but they didn't. They didn't want to get too close to the strangers next to them. Draco Malfoy checked his watch for the umpteenth time and sighed, banging his head back against the wall with a resounding thump. His eyes shifted to the unknown figure to the left of him. He smirked; Cho Chang. Why, he knew all about her. The ditz who had dated Potter at one point or the other. He didn't know what she was doing in the Ministry now; probably looking for a date, the foolish girl. No, he remembered suddenly, Chang worked here now, she was the Minister's secretary. This thought brought forth another smirk. So, the Minister had gotten his wish in finding some good-looking girl to smile brainlessly and answer the phone. Good for him.

Cho noticed Malfoy glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, and she hurriedly yanked her short skirt down, embarrassed. _'Who does he think he is,_' she thought hatefully_, 'looking at me so unabashedly._' More to give herself something to do than because she actually wanted to, she turned to her own left to see who had ended up next to her. Hmm. Luna something-or-other. Cho vaguely recalled seeing her at Hogwarts, but she didn't know much about her. Bored, she started to move her attention until she realized that she did remember her. Luna Lovegood, that crazy little girl. Imagine, her being the Ministry's child psychiatrist. Ha! Lovegood probably needed a psychiatrist more than any of the Ministry official's children did.

Luna didn't notice Cho mentally laughing at her. She didn't notice Draco Malfoy glaring at no one, or Ginny Weasley fumbling with the cigarettes in her jacket pocket.

Wait.

She actually did step out of dreamland to notice that last one. Ginny Weasley smoking! That was a pretty big leap from the Ginny Weasley that had befriended Luna in school. When Luna had first heard that the little Weasely was teaching recreational ballet classes to willing children at the Ministry, she had smiled. _'At least Ginny hadn't changed over the years_,' she had thought. Oh well, it wasn't as though Luna wasn't used to being wrong.

Ginny growled under her breath at the company she was stuck with. _I thought I saw the last of these people when I graduated_. She sighed and let the pack of cigarettes in her pocket drop out of her grasp. It wasn't like she could smoke in this tiny elevator any way. Longbottom would probably have a heart attack at the sight. Longbottom, she laughed the name inwardly. Still a bumbling boy playing gardener. Only now he was gardening for the Minister instead of Professor Sprout. Ginny had once wondered why Neville had accepted such a crappy job at the Ministry instead of a respectable teaching position, but that question was quickly self answered. He couldn't go back to Hogwarts. None of them could.

Neville sullenly opened his weary eyelids to survey the group. What a pain to be stuck with these jerks instead of at home, where he could enjoy his solitude. And the group was all girls, except for.. No. Not him again. But there was no getting around it. Draco Malfoy, suave as ever, was still haunting Neville, even this many years after school. With a groan and a fist to the wall that went unnoticed, Neville begged that Draco would not recognize him. At least, half of him did. The other half was pleading_, c'mon, you big jerk. Laugh at my existence. I could take you. I could_. But Draco never complied to others wishes. He stubbornly glared at the ceiling, not noticing Neville at all. _I guess Mr. Head of Department can't lower himself to even look at me_, Neville thought bitterly. Strange, though, that Draco would be head of that department. For some reason, Neville had really never thought of him as the Head of Muggle Relations kind of guy.

The silence not withstanding, the ticking of the watches seemed to grow deafening. Forever, it seemed that they'd been in there, and forever it seemed they would be.  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any related items.


	3. These Foolish Games

"Dammit, Lovegood, no one's interested in playing your infantile games!" Draco finally ground out, exasperated by Luna's creative attempts to start conversation.

Ginny no longer stood up for Luna as she once had, just observed the scene unmovingly from underneath lowered lashes. The silence may have resumed had Ginny's stomach not chosen that moment to growl loudly.

"Excuse me," she said softly, a demure blush appearing over her cheeks. "My kneazle knocked over her food dish this morning so I had to clean it up instead of getting breakfast…" she trailed off uncertainly.

Draco may have taken that moment to make a biting comment if his mind weren't spinning so quickly. Blushing? Uncertain? That wasn't Ginny, the feisty girl who once gave him a black eye for calling her Weaselette one too many times… was it?

"No one wants to hear your stories, Weasley." Neville muttered, age adding a bitterness to his voice that came from too many years of loneliness.

"I do," came a surprisingly soft, bell-like voice from the opposite corner. Too late Cho realized her kind voice didn't match up with everyone's haughty image of her, and the glances she was receiving were suspicious and confused. Coughing, she continued, "Well, I for one refuse to sit here in silence. I'm bored and hungry." She whined, reaffirming her spoilt brat persona. She looked up in surprise when a tiny plastic wrapped bag landed in her lap. She looked up to see Ginny shrug.

"Eat up, Chang."

"But, I…I mean, why don't you eat them? We know you're hungry." She replied with a pointed look at Ginny's stomach. Ginny shrugged again.

"Call me picky," she sighed, nodding to the jellybeans in Cho's lap. "After growing up on Bertie Bott's I just can't stomach Muggle jellybeans." She gave a soft smile, clearly inventing an excuse to be self- sacrificing, and while Draco Malfoy was not the bully he once was, he still felt the urge to grab this Ginny by the shoulders and shake her until the fiery, stubborn, fantastic personality fell out. The idea that the old Ginny, _his _Ginny, may not exist anymore, caused him a pang of longing that made him wish he was somewhere, anywhere, where he could forget about that past and not in a crammed elevator with the monument to the loss of his love right across from him.

"All right, Lovegood," Draco scowled, suddenly, gray eyes flashing dangerously, "distract us."

Disclaimer: I don't own any Harry Potter schtuff and am not making a dime.

A/N: Ok, here's a few things you all should know about this story. I haven't written for a while, but I always meant for this to be a story about trauma and growth. Hopefully it will end up pretty in depth, but for now, I'm just writing as it comes to me. If the characters seem dreadfully OOC to you, just remember that this is a story about change. I hope you enjoy!


	4. Absolutely Cuckoo

_"Don't fall in love with me, yeah, I've only recently met youuu I'm in love with you- but, you might decide I'm a nut. Give me a week or twotwo go absoluuutely cuckoo…"_

Luna had been cheerfully singing to herself for the past few minutes preparing papers for what she promised would be 'the most exciting game since Nargle Slapjack'. She remained oblivious to everyone's desperate attempts to not laugh at her song until she looked up suddenly and stopped, a spacey smile on her face.

"All ready." She said dreamily, passing out a sheet of blank paper to everyone. She had ripped the paper evenly into six squares, and handed Cho the remaining extra piece without much consideration.

"Great game, Lovegood. I don't know about you, but my boredom's gone." Draco sneered, annoyed at receiving a blank square of paper after ten minutes of waiting. Luna gazed dreamily at him, nonplussed.

"Why, Mr. Malfoy, unless you have a Time Travelling Blorfly in your head, you don't even now what the game is yet." Draco, for once, was speechless. Luna continued.

"Here are the rules," she sighed. "On your parchment you write your favorite letter and tell us why you picked it. Then we arrange the letters to spell a word." There was an anticipated silence.

"And then?" Neville finally asked. Luna looked at him with a confused glance, and did not reply. Neville sighed. "Then what do we do with the word?"

"Why, we have a completely open discussion about it, of course." Neville stared at her.

"Because everyone is here is just so bloody open." He said wryly. Luna looked slightly put out.

"They are? That would have been nice to know before I wasted the special charmed paper that forces the openness out of them." She sighed, missing five completely horrified faces staring wordlessly at her.

Disclaimer: Don't own Harry Potter or the song "Absolutely Cuckoo" by the Magnetic Fields.

A/N: Luna is such a hard character! Ah, I love how she's giving them all such a hard time- they were getting a little boring. Hopefully it will pick up some speed with the game- that was the part of the fic I centered this story around. Please review!


	5. Don't Forget

Chapter 5: Don't Forget

"I don't want to play!" Five people exclaimed with varying degrees of fear and

fury lining their voices.

"It's too late now," Luna said dreamily. Draco scoffed.

"It's never too late. If I refuse, there's nothing that _you_ can do about it."

"All right," Luna murmured, "but the spell is already in place and I'd hate to ask you your reasons for not wanting to be open…"

"Fine!" Draco snarled, muttering curses as he elegantly filled out his parchment giving everyone else reason to do the same.

Cho leaned forward first to toss her offering into the middle of the carpet, providing the others a clear view of her long figure, currently encased in a deep purple high waisted pencil skirt, a long slit in the back displaying her well toned legs. Her silk buttoned blouse matched her three inch black stilettos, and she looked beautifully out of place in this place of gray suits and black ties.

She sat back down only to find herself faced with four quizzical glances. Worried, Cho's mind raced through the ways she could have possibly messed up a game this simple. She was in the middle of her fourth unlikely scenario when she realized with a sigh of relief that they wanted her to explain her reasoning. .

"I picked two C's. For my initials." She added awkwardly when no looks of comprehension came. It was silent for a moment, and then Cho heard Draco's muffled laughter, and felt her face burn with embarrassment. So she _had_ done something stupid. She felt like crying- this wasn't fun, it was like being back at school, with everyone expecting girls that looked like Cho to be empty-headed. She wished she knew what she had done wrong this time.

Then she saw everyone else- holding exactly _one_ piece of paper. Well, Luna had given her two pieces of paper, hadn't she? It was perfectly logical for her to pick two letters…

"It's fine," came Neville's gruff voice, a voice that, though hardened by age, still could not face anyone's humiliation. "It's fine, we'll just move the C's apart from each other." he said, moving the parchment as he spoke, and though no tears had fallen, the smile Cho sent him was still watery. In the next instant, though, she had slipped back into her haughty persona.

"I know that. I picked two C's because I don't follow rules. _That's_ my reasoning," she said haughtily, but in a way that betrayed her uncertainty. The game continued with Luna, who placed her parchment next to Cho's.

"I picked E," she said in a singsong voice, "because even though it's the most commonly used letter, most of the time it's just silent, a placeholder, unnoticed but vital."

Draco was next, throwing a D into the pile.

"For Draco," he growled, "Not Malfoy. I am no longer defined by anything but Draco." His eyes challenged anyone to refute this; no one was foolish enough. He looked as handsome as he did intimidating, in a sleek black pinstriped suit, hid crisp white shirt crisp underneath his loosened tie. Ginny did not look at him as she put her letter down.

"R," she said quietly, pale fingers coming out of sleeveless black gloves, which were fairly incongruous with the rest of her outfit- a pink tutu and ballet slippers." for my brother Ron, the only person I have in the world. He, um, takes care of me, you see. Even now." Neville laughed shortly, his dark blue suit not showing a speck of the dirt he had been working with all day, before throwing his letter down.

"I," he said savagely, "because I am the only one I can depend on." He was so busy thinking about that fact that he failed the looks on the other's faces as they looked to the center of the room to see the word:

CEDRIC 


End file.
